This book reconstructs and compares the social theories of modernity of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, two classic thinkers in German social thought. The author focuses on five main topics: the historical-sociological method through which they investigate modernity; how are the concepts of history and society possible; the consequences of modern metropolis on the construction of individual subjectivity; the aestheticization of everyday life caused by the expansion of commodity culture; and the female culture as a counter-power to the domination of masculine objective culture. In the decades since Simmel and Benjamin, urban reality has undergone profound changes and we may even question the very existence of the subject of analysis: what is the city, the metropolis in today's context of globalization and capital flows? Simmel's and Benjamin's metropolis has thus become an "endless city," beyond the physical and geographical confines of urban reality.

With the crisis of the global capitalist economy, the topic of global culture is regaining its importance and needs to be revisited from both theoretical and practical standpoints. How do we make sense of this rapid flow of global consumer culture across national borders? What is the role of corporations, governments and social movements in shaping these flows? How do these flows of money, people, culture, goods and services work in practice? Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume examines the way cultures and people oppose, resist and re-centre globalisation.